Career Advice from the CEO of GE Asset Management

One of the best parts of interning at GE is attending roundtables. Roundtables are events organized by the company where a senior-level executive will speak to interns or entry-level employees about their specific business and how they got to be where they are today. Since my internship began three weeks ago, I’ve been lucky enough to attend two of them.

One of them was with the CEO of GE Asset Management, Dmitri Stockton, and was exclusive to the fifteen or so interns in my program. We were told the night before to spend some time preparing for the roundtable by learning about GEAM and preparing questions for Dmitri. However, the next morning when we sat down with him, he spent no more than five minutes giving us a high-level overview of the business, and then said to us:

“But enough about my business, what I’d like to talk to you about today is career advice. You’ll all go down your own path, and I hope it’s with GE, but if it’s not, that’s OK. I just want you all to keep a few things in mind.”

And so he began his presentation with a slideshow titled, “Career Advice.” It had ten bullet points:

  • continual learning is the single most important thing you can do to position yourself for success.
  • preparation allows you to play offense.. being unprepared can lead to negative consequences.
  • be prepared to take risks and learn from failure.. stay in the game and keep getting better.
  • move close to the things you fear the most.. you have more capacity than you may realize to conquer these fears.
  • approach your life choices with a clarity of purpose.. visualize the success you desire and ensure you have a road map to achieve it.
  • build a broad set of experiences.. take on not only different opportunities but the tough ones—this is where you will find some of your best learning experiences.
  • protect your reputation and brand.. put integrity at the center of all you do.. it only takes one event to damage your brand.
  • dream big.. set the highest expectations for your lives.. you must first believe you can be great if you expect others to believe you can.
  • seek out mentors who can help.. people are always willing to invest in those who invest in themselves.
  • give something back to your community.. you are the next generation of role models.
With each point, he elaborated. He always had a personal anecdote to share about a time he failed, a time he succeeded against all odds, and how he continues to practice self-improvement to this very day. I can speak for every intern in the room when I say that we were absolutely floored. This is the kind of guy you can listen to talk all day. It certainly wasn’t what we expected the roundtable to be like, and I’d be shocked if there’s ever one like it again.
Here are a couple of key quotes that I took down as well:
“Why are you here?”
 
We were told to make sure that we hold ourselves accountable and ask ourselves that question on a regular basis to make sure we’re not giving the answer we know we shouldn’t be.
“Mentors have an enormous impact on not only your career, but your life. They put their socks on the same way as you do in the morning, just remember that.”
 
He accredited a lot of his success to the mentors he formed relationships with early on and pushed him to follow the principles he shared with us throughout his career and his life. He also encouraged us to reach out to those people who seem may seem so distant due to status, because, well, the socks. [Full Disclosure: I totally dropped him an email that afternoon]
“Teams really make the difference. Play your position, run with the ball when it’s your turn, and stay close together so not to fumble.”
 
I’ll end here with that awesome quote, because team is everything. Hit me up on twitter at @bjp with any comments.
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